“I’m sure you were. But if you hadn’t been so foolish as to leave the Red Lion so—er—hurriedly, there would not have been the slightest need for this rustication of yours. You would not have worried yourself half-way to Bedlam, and I should not have been obliged to bring Ulysses to a locality you can see he does not care for.”
Bertram glanced in a bewildered way towards Ulysses, who was sitting suggestively by the door, and said: “You don’t understand, sir. I—I was rolled-up! It was that, or—or prison, I suppose!”
“Yes, I rather thought you were,” agreed Mr. Beaumaris. “I sent a hundred pound banknote to you the next morning, together with my assurance that I had no intention of claiming from you the vast sums you lost to me. Of course, I should have done very much better to have told you so at the time—and better still to have ordered you out of the Nonesuch at the outset! But you will agree that the situation was a trifle awkward.”
“Mr. Beaumaris,” said Bertram, with considerable difficulty, “I c-can’t redeem my vowels now, but I pledge you my word that I will redeem them! I was coming to see you on Thursday, to tell you the whole, and—and to beg your indulgence!”
“Very improper,” approved Mr. Beaumaris. “But it is not my practice to win large sums of money from schoolboys, and you cannot expect me to change my habits only to accommodate your conscience, you know. Shall we sit down, or don’t you trust the chairs here?”
“Oh, I beg pardon!” Bertram stammered, flushing vividly. “Of course! I don’t know what I was thinking about! Pray, will you take this chair, sir? But it will not do! I must and I will—Oh, can I offer you any refreshment? They haven’t anything much here, except beer and porter, and gin, but if you would care for some gin—”
“Certainly not, and if that is how you have been spending your time since last I saw you I am not surprised that you are looking burned to the socket.”
“I haven’t been—at least, I did at first, only it was brandy—but not—not lately,” Bertram muttered, very shamefaced.
“If you drank the brandy sold in this district, you must have a constitution of iron to be still alive,” remarked Mr. Beaumaris. “What’s the sum total of your debts? Or don’t you know?”
“Yes, but— You are not going to pay my debts, sir!” A dreadful thought occurred to him; he stared very hard at his visitor, and demanded: “Who told you where I was?”